Adventure Gamebooks banner
Adventure Gamebooks banner (or even more informally Zig-Zag Stripe Cover Format) is an informal term applied to the Puffin Books book cover design for their Adventure Gamebooks range, the flagship being the Fighting Fantasy Main Series of books. It also introduced what would become the very familiar and almost Fighting Fantasy Logo to the front of the books. Fighting Fantasy Main Series For the main series of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks this was the second main design (arguably the third if the wraparound cover of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain first edition is counted as its own format type). It was introduced in 1984 with book eight Scorpion Swamp, and featured a green "zig-zag" stripe across the top of the cover, containing the words Adventure Gamebooks in white type and the number of the book (preceded by the word "Gamebook") also in white. The number was preceded by the Fighting Fantasy Logo, introduced with this series, which was green with white writing. There was one exception to this, and that was Seas of Blood, where the writing in the stripe was black, as was the number. Interestingly, the Puffin logo on the spine which faces right on all Fighting Fantasy books, faces left on this book. The Fighting Fantasy logo was also printed on the cover. The spine and rear cover of each book were uniformly coloured a light green. This design was used up to the 24th book in the series (Creature of Havoc) after which, from 1987, the Dragon Cover Format was used. As with the first system, the older books (numbers one through seven) were reprinted using the new cover format. It was at this point that The Citadel of Chaos was given a new cover by Ian Miller to replace the older one by Emmanuel. Sorcery! Main article 'Sorcery!'' When it was decided that Puffin Books should take over the publishing from Penguin Books (Puffin being the children's imprint of Penguin), the format of the Sorcery! books also changed and this was to the "zig-zag" stripe style, although they retained their larger size compared to the main series. In this case the stripe was a dark orange, almost red. In other respects the style was similar to the main series, except that preceeding the number were the words "The Sorcery Epic" and the Fighting Fantasy Logo, was the dark orange/red colour with white writing. Like the main series, the Dragon Cover Format took over in 1987 and Sorcery! was reprinted in taht fashion. Other Books Introductory Role-Playing Fighting Fantasy - The Introductory Role-Playing Game This book never had an Adventure Gamebooks banner style makeover having been published prior to it and not republished during the Adventure Gamebooks banner timespan. The Riddling Reaver This book has first been published, it was done so under the Gamebooks banner] format although there was no number. Non Fighting Fantasy Books Puffin Books also published a number of other Adventure Gamebooks employing this format: * '''Maelstrom by Alexander Scott - this had a blue stripe with "Adventure Gamebooks" written in white, but no number. * Starlight Adventures - These had a light blue stripe, outlined with red, with "Adventure Gamebooks" written in white and the number of the book in the series at the far right. The number was preceded by the Starlight Adventures Logo. * Cretan Chronicles - These had a light orange stripe, outlined with blue, with "Adventure Gamebooks" written in black and the number of the book in the series at the far right preceded by the word "Gamebook". The number was preceded by the Cretan Chronicles Logo. Category:Book Formats